State of the internet in Africa – Akamai report

Akamai has released the “State of the Internet” report for the first quarter of 2013, which deals with internet and broadband adoption, security and mobile connectivity.

“Akamai’s globally-distributed intelligent platform allows us to gather massive amounts of information on many metrics, including connection speeds, attack traffic, network connectivity, availability [and] latency problems, and IPv6 (internet protocol version six) growth [and] transition progress, as well as traffic patterns across leading web sites and digital media providers,” said Akamai in their report.

In terms of the average internet connection speed, South Africa proved to be the fastest on the continent with 2,132kbps.

Ghana follows South Africa with 1,965kbps and Nigeria‘s speed is 1,965. Kenya, considered to be one of Africa’s technological hubs, has an internet connection speed of 863kbps.

Other countries in Southern Africa including Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Zambia, Malawi, Lesotho and Swaziland recorded connection speeds between 1,157 and 663 kbps.

Despite South Africa having the fastest connection speed, it is still ranked as 80th on a global scale, with countries such as South Korea, Japan and the United States of America (USA) taking the lead with 14,182, 11,582 and 8,618 kbps respectively.

According to Akamai’s report, unique internet protocol (IP) addresses, South Africa again takes the lead in Africa with almost 6.9 million IPs.

Egypt follows South Africa with approximately 2.3 million IPs, Morocco recorded approximately 1.2 million IPs and Kenya recorded almost 1.079 million IPs.

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Most of the other countries in Africa recorded IPs from approximately 850,000 right down to Guinea-Bissau’s 127 IPs.

In terms of the adoption of broadband in Africa, Reunion island leads with 27.31 per cent.

South Africa follows with 7.95 per cent, which is very closely followed by Burundi with 7.54 per cent. Liberia recorded a 5.52 per cent adoption of broadband while the lowest figures were recorded in both Algeria and Chad, with 0.09 and 0.10 percent respectively.

This is in vast contrast with first world countries such as South Korea, Japan and Canada, which recorded 87.29, 28.29 and 76.89 per cent respectively.

The adoption of “high broadband” in Africa reveals a different story.

Reunion island still takes the lead with 3.95 per cent, which is followed by Liberia’s 1.91 per cent.

South Africa recorded 1.54 per cent and Burundi 1.26 per cent. The countries in Africa with no adoption of high broadband includes Sao Tome and Principe, Chad, Togo, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau and Sierra Leone.

While Korea and Japan lead adoption of high broadband with 49.74 and 43.06 per cent respectively, other areas of the world which have no adoption of high broadband include Greenland, Cuba, Bhutan Timor-Leste, the Falkland Islands and French Polynesia.

The adoption of narrowband is much more prevalent in Africa with Eritrea taking the lead with 81.18 per cent, followed by Chad with 65.39 per cent. The Central African Republic (CAR) recorded 57.76 per cent and the Democratic Republic of Congo recorded 54.17 per cent adoption of narrowband.
A number of other African countries also recorded high percentages of narrowband adoption. Countries considered more “economically advanced” recorded the lowest adoption of narrowband.